


Severed in the Rock

by Masu_Trout



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Crying During Sex, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Hopeful Ending, Humiliation, Large Cock, M/M, Mission Gone Wrong, Monsterfucking, Multiple Orgasms, Other, Outdoor Sex, Painful Sex, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Shame, Size Difference, Size Kink, Xeno, temporary mind control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:01:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26962576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Geralt takes a job to hunt a particularly vicious monster. But when his plans go sideways, it isn't long before he loses the upper hand—and what the monster wants from Geralt, once it has him in its grasp, is nothing he could have expected.
Relationships: Fiend/Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Monster(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 104





	Severed in the Rock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mornelithe_falconsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mornelithe_falconsbane/gifts).



> Me starting this: Oh, yeah, fiends are good, I'll write a quick fiend thing! Aaaaand then the more I wrote the more I realized this was determined to be _long_. I hope you enjoy this, Morne, and thanks for all the witching. :D
> 
> This is game canon, except that I borrowed the book/show canon that Geralt only actively keeps one of his swords with him at a time rather than actively carrying both on his back. (On the grounds that, while heroically losing one sword is understandable, a character who heroically loses _two_ swords in the same battle just comes off looking incompetent.) That said, this should be entirely understandable regardless of which version of Witcher you're coming from. 
> 
> Also, for any readers who want it, the end notes have a couple of more specific content notes I couldn't easily fit in the tags/summary.

Her name was Iwona, and she was eight years old, and she liked to play on the cliffs beyond her family's pastures.

That was all her parents could manage to tell Geralt through their tears, but the next steps came easily enough: it wasn't hard to find the still-fresh footprints leading away from the far edge of the pasture and into the thin forest beyond; wasn't hard to imagine how a young girl, told to stay inside day after day, might decide to ignore her parents' orders and sneak out on a beautiful afternoon like this, with the grass in full bloom and the sky achingly blue.

Children who grew up on farms weren't easily phased by animal corpses. It must've seemed silly to her the way her father would come back to the house, ashen-faced, whenever he found another cow torn apart in the pasture. Her father butchered cows himself, after all—what was there to be afraid of in one solitary creature who could do the same?

Geralt scowled to himself as he ducked under a branch. Tracing the path left by a child less than half his size made for a lot of ducking and crawling. Burrs clung to the decorated edges of his leather-and-steel armor and his knees were caked with soil.

Iwona had kind parents, Geralt was sure. He'd seen the love in their eyes when they spoke of her, obvious even through their panic. They'd hid their fear from her as best they could, hid the stress of counting coin day in and day out until they'd finally saved enough to send for a witcher—and then, on the day they called for him, this happened.

Bad fortune all around. Geralt was hoping he could keep it from becoming worse.

He hadn't scented blood yet, which was a good sign. There were creatures that could kill a child without spilling a drop, but whatever beast had slaughtered those cows had done it messily. If luck were on his side today, he'd find her near the cliffs with a sprained ankle—or else hopelessly lost, distraught and confused but unharmed. He could hope.

Geralt dodged another low-hanging branch, followed the trail of footprints around the edge of a boulder sunk into the ground—and then froze stock-still. 

Up ahead, clear as day: a child's high-pitched scream.

No need for the tracks anymore. Geralt swore under his breath, a spike of hunter's instinct sending adrenaline pumping through him. His senses sharpened; the world seemed at once dull and razor-edged. He tore through the forest at a full sprint, ignoring the tangles of roots and the branches that snapped across his face, breaking past the last of the meager tree cover—

And skidded to a halt just inches from the edge of a fifty-foot drop.

 _Ah,_ went the detached part of his brain, even as his heart leapt into his throat. _There_ was the cliffs Iwona's parents had told him about. 

Stretching at least a hundred ells in either direction of Geralt, the cliff's-edge was a sharp drop overlooking a massive, rolling plains, extending nearly as far as the eye could see in a sea of brown and green and pops of wildflower color. Geralt didn't need to look hard to find who'd he come for, though: there, far below him at the cliff's base, stood a girl with her back pressed to the rock face who could only be Iwona. 

And there, crouched only a few lengths away from her and staring hungrily, was a fiend. 

Antlers so large they nearly caught on the prairie grasses, great pale-furred flanks stained rusty brown with old blood, raptor-like front claws scraping into the dirt as it shifted its massive bulk back and forth on its hind hooves—the monster was about to strike. 

"Fuck," Geralt breathed.

Iwona was upright, alive, but she'd stopped screaming and even from this distance Geralt could see a tell-tale limpness to her body. _Hypnotized._

Fiends weren't only terrifying for their size, and their strength, and their fangs, and their supernatural healing, and their insatiable hunger—as if all of that wouldn't have been enough. That third, golden eye, centered in their foreheads, could hypnotize a person and drive them to blindness and stupor, able to hear nothing but the fiend's roar and see nothing but the golden eye gleaming like the sun. Geralt had seen hardened warriors five times Iwona's age succumb to the terror of it; if no one snapped them out of it, a victim would sit there in stunned helpless silence and let themself be eaten alive.

He'd hoped to find her safe. Hoped to have time to make a plan: study the cows' carcasses to find what was killing them, hunt down the monster in its lair and either appease it or kill it in turn. But fiends were animals, predators through and through, and now there was no time left for anything but pure witcher's instinct.

"Get down!" Geralt bellowed, just in case there was some part of Iwona that could still hear him, and then he pulled a dancing star from his pack, lit the wick with a touch and a fumbling sign, and tossed it.

The distance was long, but the throw went true. The fiend howled in pain and rage as fire exploded across its back, twisting around and snapping at the air to try and find its foe. Near its feet, Iwona jerked, movement returning to her as the spell of the fiend's eye was broken.

She shrieked in fear once more, and then without a moment's hesitation grabbed for the cliff face behind her. Iwona clambered onto the smallest ledge, barely a foot off the ground, then grabbed for a natural handle in the rock just above her.

Smart girl. Resourceful, too. She'd understood immediately that climbing out of range of the fiend's jaws was the best option she had. If it were another monster down there, it might even be enough to save her. Fiends, though, could leap frighteningly high. Far higher than a young girl could climb in half a minute's time. 

The fiend was still thrashing about wildly, trying to put the flames out, but that wouldn't keep it much longer—and it wouldn't take long after the flames did go out for the monster's healing factor to scab over those angry-looking burns. Too little time for him to climb down the rock face, and he didn't have the militia's worth of bombs he'd need to keep the fiend at bay until Iwona could climb the rest of the way up. Which meant Geralt's plan needed a part two.

Geralt slid a hand into his pack and rummaged around blindly until he found the rope he always carried there. A rope, but nothing to tie it to, with the trees nearest the cliff's edge so scraggly they'd never hold a child's weight. And there was no way he could hold the rope himself—he needed to get down there, to distract the beast and give her time to climb up, which meant he needed something to anchor it to...

Geralt stared a moment longer, and then a plan occurred to him. A brainless, truly awful plan, the sort no halfway-competent witcher would ever even come up with, let alone actually try. He thought a second longer to see if something better would occur to him, and when nothing did he sighed. 

No choice, then.

The ground at the cliff's edge was rocky, but it would do. Geralt pulled his sword from its sheath—the steel, today, he hadn't wanted to risk the silver when he didn't know what he'd be facing—and stabbed it deep into the soil, wincing as he did. He'd need to get himself a new blade when this was done. Another blow to drive it deeper, forcing it into the earth the way only a witcher's strength could, and when Geralt tested it the blade stuck. It would hold. He hoped. 

He knotted the end of the rope around the sword's hilt, then looped the rest of it over one arm. Another dancing star, another lit wick, another throw—this time in front of the fiend rather than directly at it, driving it away from Iwona's position once more.

Over the chaos of the smoke and the monster's bellowing, Geralt let the rope drop, then took hold of it and followed it down.

* * *

It only took a few moments—and a lot of wear on his gloves—to rappel to the bottom of the cliff. Iwona flinched away from him when his boots touched ground beside her, looking almost as frightened of him as she had of the fiend. 

Not that he could blame her. With all she'd seen so far today, fear was the smart response.

"Can you climb?" he asked her roughly.

"I," she said, voice trembling, "I don't—"

No. _Focus_ , he told himself. This was a child, not a soldier. It would be cruel to frighten her worse. 

"I met your parents." He kept his voice softer this time. "They asked me to come find you, bring you home safe. But in order to do that, I need you to climb up this rope without falling. Can you do that for me?"

She climbed down the cliff herself, he was sure of that. And she had a farmer's build, even this young, her arms showing strong wiry muscle. He could only hope he hadn't miscalculated her abilities.

"I—yes." She nodded eagerly, finally seeming to realize he hadn't come to harm her worse. "I'm... I'm good at climbing, my da says so too, I've done it on the cliffs and up trees and with ropes before too—"

He cut off her nervous chatter by kneeling down in front of her and knotting the rope around her waist. "Great. When you get to the top, you take this off and throw it back down for me, all right? And the moment you do that, you run for home. Don't wait even a moment."

"But what about you?"

Sweet kid. Too young to have learned to fear witchers, or perhaps her family was simply too kind for her to learn that sort of lesson from them.

"I'll make it up. No matter what. So you don't need to wait, okay? If you want to keep us both safe, you can't hesitate."

She hesitated a moment and then nodded.

"Good," he told her. "Now, _climb_."

Iwona caught a foot in the first stone foothold, took hold of the rope, and began to pull herself higher with impressive speed.

 _Hurry_ , he bid her wordlessly, then turned—weaponless, with nowhere to run—to face the fiend.

The fiend was pacing back and forth, scenting the air, its three eyes wide and its tail whisking restlessly back and forth. Testing the strength of the smoke, Geralt thought, trying to hunt its prey through the rapidly-dying flames. 

Geralt could see the moment the beast scented him. Its ears pricked up. Its nostrils flared. New prey, bigger than the one it had been hunting before. And with a more interesting scent too.

He grinned humorlessly as the monster turned to face him, baring his teeth to match the fiend's jagged snarl. His mind was racing—inventorying what he had in his pack, what he didn't, what his next move to survive should be—even as his hand hovered over the spot at his side where a sword would have been. A few bombs left, a few potions, his crossbow and bolts... it was something. He didn't know if it would be enough.

Geralt risked a glance behind him. Iwona was halfway up the wall, or a little further. Still climbing fast. Not looking back.

 _Good kid_ , Geralt thought.

The fiend charged.

He twisted away from the force of that first all-out rush, moving just fast enough to avoid the claws aimed at his neck. _Fuck_ , it was fast, even faster than he'd expected, and by the time it hit the ground—talons and hooves slamming into the loose cliff-edge stone hard enough to shatter it—it was already turning to find him again.

Geralt raised his crossbow and fired off a bolt at the fiend's central eye, cursing to himself when it missed by a hair's-breadth to instead stick in the thick hide of its forehead. The fiend howled in response, scratching at its head to knock loose the dart embedded there, and then fixed him with a renewed glare as it dashed at him again.

Harder to dodge, this time; Geralt took a glancing blow to the shoulder that sent him tumbling to the ground, rolled, felt a blur of teeth and claws and fur pass just above his head as the fiend tried once more to pin him down. Dangerous move, but it left him right next to the massive beast. Right where he wanted to be. Geralt brought his magic up to bear, focused his fingers in the familiar shape, shouted, " _Igni!_ ," and bolted past the fiend as its mane burst once more into flame under a shower of magically-summoned sparks.

The fiend howled, slamming its claws against the dirt as it tried once more to shake the flames off. The ground shook under its wrath, stones rattling loose and dropping from the cliffside with a sound like a summer storm. Its bold yellow eyes fixed on Geralt in fury—it might not be the brightest of beasts, the fiend, but it was smarter than some and there was no question it understood who was the cause of its suffering—but it couldn't seem to decide whether to pounce on him and devour him now or focus on putting itself out first.

Geralt glanced once more at the cliff. No sign of Iwona, now, neither climbing the rope nor waiting at the top, but the rope had been untied from around her waist and was dangling back down the cliffside again. She'd run. 

Good. _Good_.

No time to waste, unless he wanted to join the fiend for lunch. Geralt took off running for the cliffside.

Both hands on the rope, both feet dug as deep into the cliffside as he could manage. Geralt didn't bother tying the rope around his waist, like he had for Iwona; if he fell, he'd be dead one way or another. 

Fiends were picky eaters. They tended to take the intestines and leave everything else, and they liked their prey still warm when they ate. Smashing his skull against a rock would be an easier way to go than being eaten alive.

Geralt took the first two steps up the cliff's face, then another and another. Finally, as he climbed higher, far enough that he was out of a fiend's leaping range, he let himself breathe a sigh of relief. The adrenaline of the fight was still coursing through him, and he could still hardly believe he could've been fool enough to challenge a fiend without so much as a sword to his name, but somehow he'd managed to survive. He could leave the fiend for now, use a cow carcass to lay a bait trap for it later and—

There was a roar from below him. Furious, and deep, and pained, and closer than it had any right to be. Geralt had just time enough to think, _Shit_ , before a ton and a half of furious, snarling monster slammed bodily into the cliffside all around him.

"Fuck!" Geralt snarled, heart slamming into his throat. It had barely missed crushing him like a bug against the stone; instead, it was clinging to the rocky wall with its talons dug in deep, head turned at an angle to stare at him with one glittering eye. The beast was above him, to either side of him, all around him, a great mass of meat and muscle that could crush him with sheer weight alone looming over him where it clung to the cliff, so near it could almost reach down and snatch him up with those predator's teeth. Climbing further would be as good as climbing straight into its mouth. 

The fiend was struggling, slowly falling—Geralt could hear it scrabbling for purchase with its back legs, its cervine hooves ill-suited for clinging to a sheer vertical slope like this. Not that he thought it would stop the beast from trying to swipe at him; it was just stupid enough not to realize cause and effect, to grab him and crush him even if that meant it would fall in the process.

He'd known they could leap. He'd thought he was prepared for that. But _this_? He'd never guessed they might be able to make it this high. Geralt hadn't ever fought one in terrain like this before, and definitely hadn't fought one while trying to climb. He'd miscalculated. Badly.

Damn it. Geralt's mind was racing too fast for any of his darting thoughts to coalesce into an actual plan. Burn it again? Let go of the rope? Wait it out and hope it fell before it could grab him? None of those were good plans. Each of them was as likely as the next to kill him. 

And wouldn't Ciri love that, he thought, imminent death making his racing thoughts more irreverent than ever. Wouldn't she just _adore_ having to explain to Yennefer and Triss, Dandelion and Zoltan, Eskel and Lambert, that he'd died taking on a fiend in single combat without so much as a weapon in hand.

 _He died as he lived: a rat-brained fool_. He could imagine Yennefer buying such a grave marker. And Triss would probably pitch in for it as well. 

The fiend saved him the trouble of having to come up with a plan. It slammed its head against the cliff face above Geralt in a frenzied rage, dragging its massive antlers against stone and earth, and, with those, the rope he was clinging onto. Geralt felt himself being swung dizzily to one side, the edge of the fiend's antler carrying him in a wide swinging arc—and then the friction of rope against bone against stone finally destroyed the weakest link of the three. Geralt had a moment to watch the line go loose, to feel the sudden dizzying slackness of the rope, before the world dropped out from under him and he plummeted towards back towards the ground. 

The first impact, quicker than he expected, slammed him so hard against stone that he saw bursts of color pop behind his eyes as his shoulder and back and arm lit up with agony. Under him, something burst wetly; Geralt had a moment of sheer, blind, animal panic at the sound and sensation of it, imagining his body bursting like barrel of mead left too long in the sun, before reality reasserted itself and he realized what he was feeling was his pack. Dozens of vials—potions, liquors, elixirs—had shattered in the fall. 

Not good. Better than if it were his body, but not good.

But he hadn't hit the ground straight on. If he had, he'd be dead; that much Geralt was sure of. Woozily, still reeling from the pain, it hit him that it must have been the swing of the rope that saved him—had propelled him to one of the closer outcroppings of rock that ended partway up the cliff, rather than the ground itself directly. 

Half on instinct, Geralt pulled his pack off his body and opened it up. Just one unbroken swallow would be enough to get him back on his feet, if only he could manage to find one... but shards of glass and a sticky syrup of mixed liquids was all he could find inside. Geralt brought his fingers to his mouth anyway, tasting the mixture. There must've been something of the swallow in it, because the taste made his head feel clearer. 

Clear enough that he realized, suddenly and with a sense of overwhelming urgency, that he needed to dodge. _Now_.

Geralt rolled out of the way just before the fiend's talons hit the soil above him—and then, with a sickening lurch, he rolled down another section of cliff, because why shouldn't this be his luck?

This time, at least, he wasn't falling straight down; he managed to control the speed of the drop as he went, sliding towards the ground rather than plummeting. The fiend snarled as it bounded after him, frenzied and furious, more than willing to snatch up and devour the one who'd helped its first choice of prey escape.

No second chance at getting up the cliff. Not with the rope gone. And Geralt didn't much like his odds of fighting a fiend winded, without potions or any sort of weapon to rely on. He'd have better odds betting against the sun rising in the morning.

Geralt rolled to his knees and then to his feet the moment he had solid ground under him again. He was very nearly back where he started, down at the bottom of the cliffs. The only distance he'd ended up managing to make was horizontal—he could see, further over, the torn rope dangling at the top of the cliff. His pack was somewhere off to the side, out of easy reach, but the fiend was still dangerously close. 

His only source of comfort was that Dandelion wasn't here to see him scrambling. He didn't want a song to be made out of this.

The base of this section of the cliffs was rockier, weathered, eroded in places with gaps like scars in the spots where rock had crumbled away. Geralt sized them up for barely a second, all too aware of what would be on him should he take too long to think, and then with an adrenaline-fueled burst of speed he dashed into the nearest gap he could see.

Behind him there was a roar. Furious. Bestial. Geralt pressed himself fully into the narrow gap just in time to watch the fiend _slam_ bodily into the stone, its antlers catching on the rock on either side as it tried to leap at him.

It snarled, shaking its head in pain. Stared him down with all three of its gleaming eyes. Drool dripped from the corner of its fanged mouth. Its ears flicked. 

_Leave_ , Geralt begged it silently. _Can't you see I'm not easy prey? Aren't you in the mood to try and find something less tiresome to hunt?_

The crevice he'd found was barely more than a narrow crack in the rock. Too small for the fiend to dig a claw into, but only barely. Geralt couldn't slide any further back or adjust the awkward angle he was caught at, and he couldn't take this time to relax and formulate a better plan.

The fiend growled as it tried to press itself closer. Its hot breath washed over Geralt, bringing with it the reek of rotten meat. Its claws dug deep into the loose stone as it tore at the walls of the narrow crevice, each enraged swipe pulling away chunks of rock and gravel. Digging him out.

Fiends weren't especially intelligent, but this one didn't need to be. Any predator could, on pure instinct alone, figure out the art of flushing out its prey.

The fiend had a particular piece of prey in mind. It didn't seem inclined to search out something else for supper. And Geralt's sword was still stabbed deep into the rocky soil on the clifftop high above him.

Geralt cursed. 

One of the first lessons Vesemir had ever taught Geralt, before even swinging a sword or following a dangerous monster's trail, was what sort of death to expect. Princes and kings could ride glorious into battle and die with maidens weeping over their pristine bodies—or, at the very least, they could hire bards to make that the story people believed. 

Witchers died beneath the claws of griffins, or with water in their lungs and a drowner's hands wrapped around their ankles, or vomiting blood after a basilisk's bite. Filthy, degrading deaths. Every battle Geralt had ever gone into, he'd gone knowing it might be his last. But this—

There were people he wanted to see again. Yennefer. Ciri. His brothers. People he didn't want to leave behind just yet. And he'd be damned if he ever made them find his body the way he'd found so many others: a pile of picked-clean bones or a bloody smear against the dirt, and nothing there to bury but the scraps of a corpse.

The fiend growled at him, hungry, its golden eyes fixed on him. Digging closer. In a moment it would have him. 

Desperation made Geralt reach within himself, made him focus every scrap of desire he had into a single word. His fingers found the long-familiar shape as he cried out in his mind, gathering his magic and his willpower alike and throwing them both at the beast. _Axii_!

He was no Yennefer or Triss. Witchers' signs were a weak sort of magic, the kind any with dedication could perform. But there was power in dedication, in desperation, and the force of Geralt's panicked magic sent dust and gravel flying and the fiend stumbling back with a bestial roar. It took a few tottering steps to the right, a few to the left; then with a full-body shiver it fell onto his haunches, shaking its head back and forth and growling dully to itself.

For a moment Geralt could only stand there, gasping for air with one hand clutching the crevice walls to keep himself from joining the fiend on the ground. Had he truly just overwhelmed the mind of a monster like that? It hardly seemed possible—he'd seen witchers with far more talent for signwork than him try to take the minds of monsters less enraged than this, and he'd seen them torn to pieces in the monsters' maws when their attempts failed.

But the fiend was stumbling still. Confused. And to question his own success now would be to throw his life away.

The wild burst of magic had taken every last bit of Geralt's energy with it. He forced himself to stand upright, forced himself to let go of the stone he'd been clinging to, and then—still breathing hard, his heart beating so heavy in his chest it could almost be made of stone—he took a clumsy step out from the crevice and back into the field. 

Bison grass crunched under his feet as he walked a wide arc around the fiend. Sweat stung where it dripped into his eyes, but wiping it away would take energy he could better spend walking. He wouldn't have long, he knew, but if he could just get up that first cliff, to where his pack had spilled, he could use the herbs he carried to regain his strength—

There was a noise from behind him. A low, furious growl. 

Geralt didn't bother to turn and look. He broke into a run. 

The fiend caught up with him ten steps from the base of the cliff, smacking him with one massive taloned paw. The claws carved through his first layer of armor like it was warm butter, skittered off the layer of steel beneath; Geralt rolled with the blow, letting it carry him sideways rather than smack him into the rock, but before he could make use of the momentum it was on him again.

One of its paws caught him on his shoulder, pinning him where he lay. The fiend settled back on its hind-hooves, letting enough of its weight rest on Geralt's body that he had to wheeze for air, but not enough to crush him entirely. Not yet. 

A sign, he needed another sign, _axii_ or _igni_ or _aard_ or anything that might give him a moment's opening—but even as he thought it he knew it wouldn't work. He'd drained every drop from the reserves of his energy for that last desperate attack. Even the proper gestures were all but beyond him right now; his hands felt sluggish, slow to obey the commands his mind was trying to give them.

Damn it all, thought Geralt tiredly, staring up into an eye like a sun ringed by blood-stained fur. He'd fought to the bitter end, only to end up here regardless. Was this how it was going to be, then? Torn apart for some beast's lunch? 

He'd always hoped to go differently. Foolish of him, maybe. He knew what he was, knew what kind of end a life like his would lead to. But some part of him had always hoped he wouldn't die alone.

The girl was all right. She'd escaped. She'd live, at least for today, and someone would know where his body was. He had to hold onto that.

With a deep, growling sniff, the fiend leaned in. Geralt braced itself as the jaws opened wide, wrinkled his nose at the stench, and waited for the pain. He wouldn't look away. He wouldn't flinch.

The fiend drew its head closer to his, until its muzzle was nearly pressing against Geralt's face, and then it licked a long, wet, carrion-scented stripe across Geralt throat and chin and face.

Geralt sputtered, thrashing around for all the good it would do him. The tongue was as rough as scurver hide, leaving pinpricks of pain where it scraped across his flesh. For an instant, Geralt had an image of this being his death: pinned in place while his skin was slowly abraded away by some sort of maddened, gourmand fiend. 

The beast made a low, pleased sort of growl deep in its throat when it finally finished its taste of him. It settled back on its haunches once more, staring down at him with all three eyes fixed firmly on him. One of its taloned, birdlike paws plucked at his armor—softly, at first, not quite enough to tear through it, but getting more forceful, scraping at leather and metal together with a single-minded intent.

What was this?

 _Scrape_ went the talons, patient but insistent, drawing more forceful with each repetition. Its claw caught the edge of his breastplate during one of its passes; it pulled it back, as if it were trying to peel the layers off him, only to let go when Geralt wheezed in pain.

It blinked at him. Growled. Pulled at the breastplate again. Its central eye was gleaming a bright, dizzying gold.

The fiend wanted his armor off. To eat him more easily, was Geralt's first thought, like peeling the shell off a crab—but then, he'd never known fiends to care much about that. They ripped right through bone and shell and armor alike to find the meat they desired.

Perhaps a curse? Someone or some _thing_ more intelligent than a simple fiend staring out from behind that creature's eyes? But Geralt couldn't imagine that being the case either; his medallion was humming with the lingering aftereffects of his desperate _axii_ , but it had been still and quiet around his neck when he was fighting the beast before.

Then maybe it was his own magic at fault still. It could be that it was still more dazed than Geralt had realized, that it was acting irrationally. But irrational or not, it was getting more insistent; every clawing motion it made now was enough to make Geralt wince with the force of its claws. He had two options before him now: pull his armor off and see if it murdered him the moment he did, or keep still and have it murder him for sure.

Both deeply appealing options, of course. He was spoiled for choice today,

Geralt moved his arms as much as he was able, pulling them down to his sides to fumble at the clasps of his armor. The fiend made a low noise, clearly pleased, as he began to peel it off of himself, and that was something. Not something he understood, and not something he could trust. But something that was keeping him alive for the next few seconds, at least.

That was what mattered here. Live for the next few seconds, then the next and the next. He would survive this. He wasn't going to let Ciri down this way.

The fiend nuzzled him again the moment the breastplate was free, its massive head sweeping across Geralt's body as it rubbed itself against him. Big enough to tear him open, to chew him in half—Geralt kept very still in response to its movements, not willing to make any too-sudden gestures that might break this sudden strange tolerance it had towards him. But it was licking at him again, making Geralt have to fight not to squirm, giving a low purring rumble in its chest all the while. It was like something between a dog and a cat, but with the antlers of a deer and the claws of an eagle—and, of course, the size of a house. Altogether not his ideal choice of creature to get affection from. Especially with... whatever circumstances these were.

With the armor off, Geralt was left in just leather and cloth from the waist down, and nothing but bare skin above: his breeches and smallclothes were soaked with blood and sweat, same as his armor, and for a moment when the fiend turned its massive head lower to rub against him there instead he thought that might be the reason. It was entranced by the scent, it had to be, it wanted his clothes to play with like a cat given a string—

And then its body shifted as it pressed himself against Geralt. Not much, nothing too dramatic. But enough that he could could see past the beast's furred barrel of a chest, could get a glimpse of the spot between its hind legs marked by thick fur.

Geralt froze. Realization slammed through him with all the weight of a giant's hammer, with all the cold shocking enormity of being plunged headfirst into the ocean. He felt foolish and terrified and sickened at once, all of it rushing through him together and fighting for space in his head.

The fiend's arousal was half-slipped from its sheath already, a dark red thing with a broad, blunt head and a girth to match the rest of its gargantuan size, glistening with some sort of slippery-looking clear fluid that dripped from its cock-slit and glistened along its length. And the fiend was still rubbing its head against Geralt, casually, making those low pleased noises with its cock flushed against its stomach. While Geralt watched, stunned, the fiend's cock slipped a little further from its sheath as it moved to scratching its claws against Geralt's breeches.

It would tear through those in a heartbeat. And then, when it had done that, it would...

Fuck. _Fuck._ How how much of a fool could he possibly be? Why hadn't he thought to guess something like this? 

Because it was filthy, of course, filthy and degrading, too humiliating and too grotesque a possibility to entertain for even a moment—but that only made him feel even stupider for failing to account for it. He'd seen things enough in his role as a witcher to disabuse him of the idea of a just universe; no one ever believed their fate in life might to be devoured alive by rats, or burned at a pyre to the sound of a jeering crowd, or cast out by their own family and left a nameless corpse for the crime of helping an innocent. And yet he'd thought it might be different for him, that he could trust in his brain and his skill with a sword to find him a better end than this: a toy for a monster, a thing to be bruised and bloodied and forced open until the fiend had gotten its fill of warm, yielding flesh. 

No. He refused. Geralt took a steadying breath, digging his nails into his palms until the pain brought with it a flash of clarity. Even if he couldn't escape, even if he couldn't stop this from happening—he'd survive. 

_And how are you planning to do that?_ asked the part of his mind that was still capable of rationality. 

It might very well not be a question of determination. Even if didn't catch him with a claw while it was... making use of him, and even if it didn't simply decide to devour him after, there was no guarantee he'd survive the act itself. The fiend's cock looked big enough to split him open and then some; Geralt's body was designed to withstand pain better than a human's, but even still there was no guarantee he'd be able to fit something of that sheer, overwhelming size inside him.

He'd been with men before, when the urge struck him. He knew how it felt to be taken: the ache of it, the discomfort that faded into pleasure. And he knew that it would not be a mere ache with a _partner_ like this, that pleasure would not come so easily as forcing himself to relax.

He tried to imagine what it might feel like—that blunt, flared head pushing inside him, stretching him open mercilessly, the fiend ignoring every gasp or moan of muffled plea as it relentlessly pushed deeper into him—and found he couldn't entertain the idea for more than a few moments before his mind skittered away from it.

No matter. Geralt huffed a laugh, face up with his back in the dirt and a fiend hovering over him. He'd find out soon enough anyway.

His mind kept flitting through wild escape scenarios, each more impossible than the next. Geralt discarded them all at the sound of the fiend's rumbling impatient growl. 

The fiend scratched at his breeches again, growing impatient once more. Soon it would be tearing at him properly. 

Geralt brought his hands to the tops of his breeches, wincing as the movement aggravated the bruises spread across his chest. He paused a moment—one last breath, one last desperate ludicrous plan that he had to throw aside—and he leaned up enough from the dirt that he could pull them down and then, yanking his boots off as he went, peel them awkwardly away from his body.

The fiend's nostrils flared, scenting the air, the moment Geralt's body was exposed. Geralt's own cock was soft between his legs, his chest a mottled mess of already-forming bruises, his skin oddly tender where the fiend had licked at him. He fought the urge to cover himself—what good would modesty do against a monster like this?—and watched it as it examined him with those three gleaming eyes.

It seemed pleased, as much as a fiend could be pleased. Geralt didn't know if he liked that he was beginning to be able to read its mood. 

He wondered, idly, as it examined his body with its mouth and nose once more, whether he'd been the cause of this. The thought came less out of genuine curiosity and more out of a desire to ignore the way its tongue scraped over his skin as it licked eagerly at his shoulder, but the moment he latched onto it he found he couldn't let go. Was this some further aftereffect of his desperate _axii_ —his magic still working to bend the creature's mind, to turn its hunger into something closer to fondness? Or had this been headed this way all along, with Geralt merely ignorant of the fiend's intentions? It had been hungry at first, he knew it had been hungry—he'd seen it planning to bite down on Iwona. But perhaps he'd miscalculated how a witcher appeared to the eyes of a fiend; perhaps he'd appeared more rival than food, and this was the prize the beast took for winning their fight. A prize of flesh.

His kind weren't quite human, after all. Not once they were through the trial of the grasses. Perhaps fiends could pick up on that too.

Whatever its reasoning, it seemed pleased by its examination of Geralt. It gave a soft little _whuff_ of air, more canine than anything else, as it finished nosing its way down his body.

Geralt was incredibly tense. It would be safer to relax, he knew, to breathe deep and force his body not to fight the intrusion that was coming, but his brain couldn't seem to manage it. He wished he hadn't lost his pack; even that potion slurry might've been useful to him now. Should he stay on his back, looking up at the beast, or should he flip over onto his stomach? The latter option sent a spike of shame pulsing through his body: being filled up like that, on his hands and knees, really would make him feel like nothing more than an animal in rut. But then he thought about what it would mean to stay lying face up like this—the scent of that rotted-meat breath washing over him, staring up into that drooling mouth with its dagger-like teeth, being dragged back and forth as the fiend set its pace without even the ground to brace himself against...

As soon as he thought the fiend might allow it he took the chance to flip himself over onto his belly, his knees under him and his chest pressed to the dirt.

It was almost easier this way. Now it was merely his nakedness, and the overwhelming bulk of the fiend looming over him, and the burning humiliation of knowing what was about to come that he had to concern himself with. Barely anything at all, really.

Dandelion had always told Geralt his sense of humor showed at the most inappropriate times. If only he knew.

The fiend made a low rumbling noise, something that could almost have been a purr—if, Geralt thought, the cat in question had been possessed by a particularly grotesque demon. Its cold wet nose pressed for a moment against his lower back; he could imagine it examining him, those eyes roaming over the newly-exposed parts of his flesh. 

And fiends' bodies might be a far sight from humans', but ultimately the differences weren't so extreme that the beast wouldn't recognize what these parts of Geralt were for, what it could do to him now.

Geralt felt it the moment the fiend's cockhead first brushed against his hole. There wasn't a force in the world that would've made him able to ignore the sensation: the flushed heat of it, the blunt tip that rubbed against his most sensitive skin, the sheer weight he could feel even just having it rubbed against his body. Pressed close like this, it was so much more massive than Geralt had even begun to realize—and Geralt noticed, it was much wetter than he'd expected too. That glistening slick across the fiend's cock, what Geralt had assumed was the creature's equivalent of precome, seemed intended to help ease the agony of that first insertion.

Perhaps for a larger creature that would be simple enough. Geralt didn't know how much it would help someone his size against a beast that made wild bears look small. All the same, he could hope. Geralt told himself to breathe and relax, managed to do neither of those things, and squeezed his eyes shut tight when he felt the fiend above him begin to shift impatiently. 

The size difference made it difficult for the fiend to line their bodies up, and the first thrust didn't catch: it pressed for a moment against Geralt's hole, making him bite down on a groan, and then slid up across Geralt's arse and back. He dug his hands in the dirt, every part of him desperate to break and try to crawl away, knowing if he did those jaws would be around his throat in an instant.

Maybe it would be better to die than live through this humiliation. Maybe— _no_ , he snarled to himself, biting the inside of his cheek. He wouldn't stop trying to survive. Not now, not ever. He'd already made his decision.

The second, from a different angle, didn't quite work either; it slipped down this time, rubbing between his thighs, brushing Geralt's own cock with its massive length. It made him shiver again to realize just how huge it had become fully unsheathed: he'd be speared open on that thing if the fiend ever managed to get inside. 

The third—the third was a better angle. The broad blunt head of the fiend's cock pressed against Geralt's hole, rubbing against him in shallow little half-thrusts with the weight of the fiend's body behind each small movement, but... it wouldn't fit, he thought with mixed horror and relief, as the fiend continued to rock against him. There simply wasn't any way it could physically be possible. Perhaps it would keep rubbing uselessly against him, or perhaps it would realize and decide to make the most of Geralt's meat instead, but either way—

The fiend growled, frustrated, and one of its massive claws wrapped around Geralt's throat to yank his head back. He wheezed at the force of it, thrashing, trying to strike out at any part of it he could—if it was going to eat him, he sure as fuck wasn't going to go down easily—but instead of its gaping jaws, the three golden eyes were the first thing Geralt saw.

A wave of calm washed over him at the sight. His limbs felt sluggish, suddenly, hard to feel and harder to move. The ground beneath him, the sky overhead... all those seemed washed out now. Barely there at all. The fiend was the only solid-seeming thing in this world, the pale silvery blood-spattered mass of its body and the golden eyes that glowed like suns. What else could be important? What else was there to look at?

Geralt shifted, the part of him not caught up in those eyes raising every alarm it could. He knew what was happening. He wouldn't be much of a witcher if he didn't. But he had no magic reserves, no fire, no sword, no way to break the spell—and, second by second, it was getting harder to remember why he needed to in the first place. 

_It'll eat you,_ he reminded himself sluggishly, trying to center fangs and pain and death in his mind, trying to fight past the greyness overtaking him. But the threat of those teeth and that great looming body seemed so far away. As if all of this was happening to someone else, to a stranger whose well-being he had no reason to care for. It was hard not to let himself relax, let the tension in his body ease, let himself sink it to the fuzziness of it and just for a moment stop worrying.

This time, the noise that slipped from between the fiend's teeth seemed pleased. Like it had done something right, or perhaps as if it thought Geralt had done something right. It was hard to puzzle it out through the weight of the grey fog pressing down on his mind; following even the simplest of thoughts to its conclusion felt like trying to carry water through a desert with nothing more than his cupped hands to hold it in. Whenever he might almost have it, it slipped away or evaporated into thin air. But he turned the noise over and over in his mind regardless, knowing there was something he needed to be thinking about, something he needed to fear...

And then the fiend rutted against him once more, its cock pressing bluntly against his hole—and this time, with Geralt's body relaxed, the thick head of its cock forced past his body's natural resistance and with one steady push slid into him.

"Fuck," Geralt snarled, back arching, hands clawing at the dirt. The pain had done for Geralt what he couldn't do for himself: reality slammed down around him with all the force of hammer striking anvil, clearing away the grey fuzz and leaving only desperation and wide-eyed panic in its place.

It felt huge. So much bigger than he could have guessed. And the fiend had let go of his throat to brace itself against the ground once more, sliding slowly but inexorably into him, its talons keeping him pinned to the earth so there was nothing he could do but thrash and groan and take it all. 

Just the head was inside him thus far; he kept clenching around the fiend's cock as his body tried uselessly to repel the invasion, his struggles only making Geralt feel its cock so much more intimately. The fiend's arousal was surprisingly warm, and every bit as slick as it had looked—that, Geralt thought, was probably the only thing keeping him alive right now. It eased the way for itself as it pressed deeper, rocking against him with small thrusts as its cockhead drooled precome so heavily that Geralt could feel it inside him, slick and messy.

Gods. Geralt pressed his head against the dirt, letting his hair fall in a curtain around him. He almost wished for the return of the fiend's control over him. He hated having his mind not his own, hated being under another's power—but this was the same fate, in the end, just through a more roundabout path. He still couldn't control his own body; still had no power over what was about to be done to him; still had no option left open to him but to kneel here on all fours with his chest in the dirt and his his hips canted upward and let the fiend force its cock deeper and deeper into his body. The only difference was that now he could feel every ache as it pushed further into him and every moment of humiliation as his body became a tool of another being's pleasure.

He sucked in heavy, gulping breaths. His heart was beating rapidly, his muscles ached with the strain. Eventually taking the fiend's cock became easier—not because the fiend grew any smaller, but because his body realized fighting this intrusion was a losing battle. Or, more than that, a lost one: he had fought unarmed against a beast nearly a dozen times his size, he had failed, and now the victor was taking its spoils. Nothing strange about it. 

And if there was one thing he could be grateful to the fiend for, it was that seemed to realize tearing its toy in half would end its fun early: it continued rutting slowly against him long after he would've expected its patience to run out, pushing deeper into him centimeter by hard-won centimeter, growling noises that sounded like pleasure—or, though Geralt's cheeks burned to even think it, praise—for every little bit more that Geralt's body accepted him. He didn't know how to feel about it: glad to be keeping possession of his life this little while longer? Furious at what was being done to him? Or ashamed at the way the monster was treating him—like he was its mate, needing urging and comfort every step of the way?

Slowly, his muscles eased around the intrusion, accepting what was being done to him even when his mind couldn't. Turning the pain he'd thought unbearable into... well, an ache, to be sure, and a humiliating feeling of impossible fullness, but...

Geralt bit his cheek hard enough to bleed, trying to swallow down the sound that wanted to force its way out of his throat. The fiend was was deep enough inside him now that it was pressing against some place inside him—not just hitting it with each thrust, but making him feel it even when it was completely still thanks to just how _huge_ it was—and the pressure there was radiating a sensation through his body that was... not pain. The furthest thing from pain.

He couldn't quiet himself entirely. He could tell the fiend heard him from the way it paused. 

A moment of stillness, scenting the air—and Geralt knew before it even moved that it could smell the change in him now. Could smell the way Geralt's own cock was stirring against his belly, all the horror Geralt could muster in the face of this not enough to override that base, animal pleasure pulsing through him as he was taken. He was bent on his knees like a beast himself, being used against his will, being forced to take a creature so huge the thought of it filled him with terror—but he was being filled, being fucked, and the only thing his body knew was that it wanted more, wanted that spot inside him to feel every last bit of sensation it could. His knees ached where the rocks were digging into him, the bruises on his shoulders and chest still radiated pain, his hole felt stretched open and sore from how much it had already been forced to accept, and yet there was a pleasure building at the base of his spine and in his stomach and cock, not overriding the pain but existing alongside it.

He didn't want this. _He didn't want this._

"Stop," Geralt groaned, the pleasure making him beg for mercy in the way no pain could have managed. "Stop, get off of me, _stop_ —"

Suffering was something he could bear. He was a witcher; he knew pain better than he knew his own name, had been shaped and changed by it body and soul. Pain was a teacher, a mentor, an old friend that sat beside him after every battle he barely managed to live through. But the pleasure... he couldn't take that back. Couldn't work past it the way he worked past the agony. Geralt wouldn't ever be able to make himself forget that he'd gone onto hands and knees for a monster, given his body to it, taken its cock and gotten stiff from the way it felt inside him.

The fiend didn't respond. It didn't understand him. But it was clear it understood what the change in his body meant, because the next thrust was no small hesitant thing; it dug its claws into the dirt on either side of Geralt's hands, arched its body even more to angle itself against Geralt's, and _pushed_ into him with one forceful thrust, sliding its cock at least a span further into him as Geralt arched and swore and writhed against the intrusion. A pause, a rocking motion—and before Geralt could catch his breath it was pushing him open again.

He realized, then, that it was finally happening, the thing he'd dreaded all along: it had given him time enough to make his body accept this violation, and now its patience was done. It intended to sheath its cock fully inside Geralt's body, whether he wanted it or not.

Fuck. He couldn't take it all, surely he couldn't, but his body seemed more willing than he'd given it credit for. It just kept getting bigger around the more it pushed into him, hot and slick and unstoppable, forcing his body further open around it the more Geralt tried to fight. It felt as though his innards were being pushed aside by its cock, his organs rearranging themselves to accept what was impaling him deeper and deeper. 

Geralt knew it wasn't how bodies worked, he knew the fear was absurd—but he couldn't help but vividly imagine this intrusion marking him forever: his body permanently changed by this, turned into something open and gaping and obscene, marking him to anyone who knew as a monster's toy to be fucked and discarded at will.

(And it felt good. Geralt didn't want to let himself think it, but he couldn't keep any other thought in his head. It was agony and it felt incredible, the pleasure increasing with the pain until both of them were almost more than his body could bear, until he was limp and shaking and gasping dryly with tears leaking from his eyes more out of sheer physical reaction than any sort of emotional response. His mind felt wrung out and empty, any memory or emotion or mantra he might have held onto chased away by the twin forces of pleasure and pain—this was happening, and it was going to keep happening until the fiend decided to let it stop, and all he could do was kneel there limply in the dirt and grass and let himself be used as his body shivered with desire.)

Finally, the fiend stopped. Geralt's whole body was clenching around the fiend's cock now, its arousal a firebrand forced deep inside him. If he moved his hand to his stomach now, he he had a suspicion he knew what he would feel: the bulge of it pressing against him the inside, pushing at the skin and muscle there so it would be obvious from any direction just how deeply he had taken this, how thoroughly he had let himself be fucked by the fiend. Fur tickled his ass, the thick wiry tufts that grew around its crotch pressed against him now.

It was inside him fully. And somehow he was still whole, still uninjured; his body had taken it all, every last inch of it, and left him so swollen and full and stretched that all he could do was kneel here in the dirt and breathe around the length of its cock and wait.

 _How impressive, the skills of a witcher,_ he thought dryly, some part of him still in possession of its wits enough to let him hold onto sarcasm, and it wasn't at all funny but he wanted to laugh anyway.

He was glad no one else was here to see him now. More than he'd ever been grateful for anything in his life, he was grateful for that. It was just him and the fiend here, the two of them and the dirt and the empty blue sky, and Geralt knew exactly what was going to happen next. He was dreading it, horrified, disgusted—but no amount of repulsion could stop his cock from hanging stiff between his legs or little shudders of pure pleasure from running through him with every shift of the fiend's body.

The fiend growled, shifted, testing Geralt's body once more. It pulled its hips back, sliding out of his hole with ease until only the tip of its cockhead was still buried inside him, giving Geralt just enough time to squirm at the strangeness of _not_ being filled before it growled and, with an eager sort of intensity, slammed its cock back into him.

Geralt gave a shout, unable to keep his mouth shut at the overwhelming mix of heat and agony and desire that slammed through him all at once. It was too fast, too sudden, too rough a pace for that overwhelmingly huge cock, the punishing rhythm the fiend was setting against his body making the flared head feel even larger as it teased his body from the inside; even being forced to ride a man's clenched fist couldn't have filled him as utterly or as inescapably as the fiend was filling him now. But the same broad cockhead that hurt so much to take was rubbing against that place inside him every time the fiend thrust back in, followed by its entire length filling him up as it thrust deeper.

Geralt came, untouched, at its third vicious thrust. His body clenched tighter around the fiend as shivers ran down his spine, adrenaline and pleasure pumping through his veins. The fiend didn't stop, didn't even slow; Geralt had known it wouldn't. It fucked him through the aftershocks at the same merciless pace, leaving him to gasp and grit his teeth against the feeling of pain without pleasure to temper it: his limp cock twitching, his thighs trembling, his spine aching like he was on fire.

It fucked Geralt until he was hard again, made him come once more against the brutal pace of its cock and kept going. It wasn't about Geralt's pleasure—his orgasm was a useless thing, a mere byproduct, incidental to what the fiend was chasing. This would end when it came, or it wouldn't end at all.

He didn't know which it would end up being. He wasn't sure he could bring himself to care anymore. 

It would have been easier if his body would only stop wanting this—if knowing he was nothing but a _thing_ to be used for the fiend's pleasure could have chased Geralt's own pleasure away, or if his spent and exhausted body would finally give up on chasing more of the pleasure and just let him feel the pain alone. But every time he came and thought he might be done, useless and shaking and finally unable to bear any more of this, the fiend's cock would force into him again and send those same sparks of desire shivering down into him. He came until he was completely spent, until his cock had nothing more to give, and then when the fiend kept on fucking him he came dry. Each peak made the pain worse, and each stabbing pain made the pleasure more intense. 

Just as he was beginning to grow certain his fate would be the second, that this would somehow continue on without end, the fiend tensed. Its thrusts began to grow rougher, desperate, more erratic; its claws dug thick gouges into the earth; its head dropped to nuzzle against Geralt's, rubbing against his shoulder and cheek and face so that for a moment the fiend's coarse fur was all he could sense—nd then, with a bestial grunt and a last, forceful thrust, it rutted into him once more and there, deep inside Geralt, the fiend's cock pulsed as it came.

Geralt came again too, a dry weak useless thing, at the feeling of the fiend's seed filling him up. It was like his body had become nothing but a vessel for the monster: its cock softening inside him, its come hot within him, his arms and legs still shaking with its body surrounding him on all sides.

The fiend growled as it began to withdraw from him, its cock still pulsing as it came in long, drawn-out spurts. Geralt felt it within him—and then, when it finally pulled its cock free from Geralt's rim with a slick filthy noise, felt it splatter across his hole and thighs, leaving Geralt marked by the monster inside and out.

He took deep, gulping breaths of air, forcing himself to stay calm. Reality wanted to come rushing back in, but he couldn't let it yet. He needed that blankness, that empty feeling that had overtaken him as the fiend used him, in order to survive one moment to the next. Panic and shame in equal measure were building deep within him, distant still but all too present. If he let himself begin to think once more _now_ , with the fiend still at his back, he would start lose control of himself. He'd weep or fly into a rage, end up acting like barely less of an animal than the creature behind him.

Geralt had let the fiend use him. Let it fuck him until he couldn't think. And he'd come on its cock all the while, over and over, let the monster wring more out of him than any human partner ever had.

Maybe it was survival, his desperate desire to live overtaking everything else. Maybe being a witcher made him less human than even he could have ever guessed—closer to the beast at his back than a man. Maybe there was just something wrong with him.

He didn't know the answer. He didn't want to think about it any longer.

Geralt's body felt empty, obscenely open. His hole kept tensing as he tried instinctively to clench around something that was no longer there. The monster's seed was deep inside him still, and everywhere else too: drying across the sore, puffy rim of his hole, his arse, his cock, the backs of his thighs... he could swear some of it had gotten in his hair somehow. 

Gods, he had to look a mess right now.

He shivered as he finally let himself fall, collapsing onto his side with his arms and legs no longer able to support him. If the fiend was going to kill him, it would kill him. Every part of Geralt's body was one dull throbbing bruise; he could no more stand up right now than he could drink an ocean or lift a mountain. Even the smallest movement to defend his own life seemed an impossible task. 

From his spot in the dirt he glanced up towards the fiend. Its massive bulk was enough to blot out the sun overhead even with it sitting on his haunches and staring down at him. It blinked at him with all three eyes, whuffed out a satisfied little sound, yawned to show every last gleaming predator's tooth—and then, abruptly, flopped down beside him.

Even as laxly as it was moving now, sated by what it had done, the force of its body against the ground was enough to make the dirt shake. Geralt grit his teeth and watched it. Tense. Waiting for the strike he knew would soon come.

The fiend yawned again, seeming even less alert this time, and with one taloned claw it grabbed hold of Geralt 'round his torso and dragged him closer until he was tucked against the sparse, coarse, pale grey fur of its belly and ribs. This would be it, it had to be—but instead of clamping its jaws around Geralt's throat, it rested its massive head next to Geralt's own, eyes half-lidded and breathing slow and content.

With Geralt next to him like this, tucked next to and covered by its bulk, it almost seemed...

Oh. Of course.

A few hours ago, the realization might have horrified Geralt. Now it seemed obvious. Almost inevitable, really, the natural progression of everything he'd been part of so far.

Its body between Geralt and the rest of the world, its bulk keeping him warm: the fiend was protecting him. Protecting its mate. And Geralt...

If he had his strength, or his sword, or his magic reserves, he would have fought this. Would have done anything else but accept the presence of the creature who'd brutalized him so thoroughly. And he certainly wouldn't have pressed his face into that rough, bloodstained fur, breathed deep, and taken an almost perverse sort of comfort in the now-familiar scent of it.

But Geralt had none of those things left to him now, and no guess as to when they'd return. All he had was his body, and the monster by his side, and the pain lighting up his muscles that let him know everything that had just happened was real. 

Fighting it would have meant nothing, in the end. It was far easier to close his eyes, lean against the fiend's body, and just for a moment allow himself to escape all of this.

Sleep came like a sudden tide, dragging him beneath its waves. He welcomed it.

* * *

Geralt woke. Mouth fuzzy, body stiff and sore, the pillow beneath his head nothing more than grass and dirt... 

"Shit," Geralt mumbled, blinking blearily. Had he been drunk, to fall asleep in a field like this? Or had there been a battle?

Trying to push himself onto hands and knees sent a twist of pain through his torso—and, with it, a sudden and immensely unwelcome flood of memories.

" _Shit_ ," Geralt said again, this time with much more feeling. 

He whipped his head around, panic crawling up his spine... but no, he was alone. No monster lurking nearby, no massive silver-furred bulk, nothing but heavy prints in the rocky earth to let him know where it might have gone.

That was... good. No, not good, excellent. Geralt was glad to have escaped the fiend's teeth, to be given another chance to hunt it down and face it again. The sight of it missing didn't make him worry, didn't fill him with _regret_ —

Geralt breathed, digging his hands into the ground until his knuckles went white. He was confused, that was all. Unsettled. And he could sort through all that, take apart his thoughts on what exactly had happened here in this field and shove them down until they had no more power over him, but—later. He didn't have the luxury of introspection right now.

A glance at the sky told him not long had passed since he'd fallen asleep. Two hours, maybe three. Not so much time that he would be missed; all the same, he didn't want to spend any longer here than he had to, naked and exposed with a monster's seed dried across his body.

Every part of Geralt was so sore and swollen that he might as well have been set on fire. There was no permanent damage, he was fairly certain, a miracle in and of itself: a cursory examination of his own body, as focused and distant as he could manage to make it, revealed nothing worse than scratches and swelling and a massive swathe of healing bruises painted across his torso. A witcher's luck indeed, to survive all that had happened to him.

Walking was out of the question for now, though. Trying got him halfway to a standing height before a burst of pain sent him crumpling back to his hands and knees, sucking in quick shallow breaths to try and push back the pain. 

Geralt crawled instead. Slowly, carefully, pausing to gasp whenever the pain flared up too brightly, he made his way over to his abandoned clothes. He used the leather of his armor to try and rub the fiend's seed away from where it had dried across his body—then, when he'd done as much as he could there without water to rely on, he carefully pulled his smallclothes back onto his body.

Having some sort of covering, no matter how meager, immediately made him feel more human. Geralt took a moment just to appreciate it—the sensation of _not_ being exposed, of having some sort of barrier between himself and the world—and then with renewed energy he worked on getting his trousers on.

It wasn't an easy task. His body complained every time he tried to stretch the way he needed to slip back into them. But Geralt gritted his teeth and pushed past the pain until finally he managed to get them over his legs and up his body. The first few layers of his armor were easier: he pulled his linen undershirt and leather coverings on much more quickly than he'd managed his trousers. His overarmor he left off, though, instead opting to sling it over his shoulders as he crawled his way closer to the base of the cliff and the shade offered there. 

There, among the rocks, Geralt found his pack. His potions and serums weren't any less shattered now—they'd mixed together to form a weird, syrupy sludge crusted into the leather—but the dried goods were still mostly usable. Geralt pulled out a hunk of salted venison and some dried fruit he'd been keeping wrapped in one of the side pouches and began to chew idly on them, his body wanting food despite the fact that he couldn't even begin to feel hunger right now.

The meal helped some. At the very least, it cleared the taste of blood and dirt out of his mouth. And with food inside him he could begin to think more clearly, though all _that_ really helped Geralt with was better realizing just how shit his situation was now. 

With the strength he had now, he had no hope of climbing back up that cliff. Even the somewhat gentler slope further on would be far too steep for his body to handle in this state. 

He had food, but no water. Witcher that he was, his body would heal quickly, but not more quickly than dehydration would begin to addle his mind. The few who knew where he was were farmers, not warriors or fellow witchers. They had no way of knowing how long a fight between Geralt and the fiend ought to take—and even if they _did_ come to suspect something was wrong, no reason to risk their own lives wandering out into the wilderness just to try and find him. 

There was little love lost between witchers and the rest of humanity, after all. To the family in the farmhouse past the cliff's edge, he was nothing more than an inconvenience, a monster they had to toss their hard-earned coin to in order to make another monster go away.

Geralt sighed and let his head fall back against the rock wall behind him. His safest option would be to conserve his energy. Perhaps when night fell he'd be able to drink dew, should it form; he didn't much like the idea of staying out here so long, exposed to the elements and alone with his thoughts, but he couldn't think of a better option available to him now.

He stared up at the clouds, listening to the wind whistle past the rocks and trying to think of nothing at all—and then startled back to full awareness, dragging himself out of his slowly-circling thoughts, when he heard a voice on the breeze far above him.

"Witch—?" came the yell, broken up by the wind and the canyon's echo. A man's voice, strong and sure and more than a little bit fearful. A moment later there was another call, this one clearer: "Geralt?"

Geralt stumbled forward, nearly trying to stand again before he remembered. He was swordless still, with no way of getting closer to the voice and no clue who it might be, but none of that mattered now. It was a human, calling for him. And if it turned out to be an illusion, some nekker's trick—then so be it. He pushed off against the wall just enough to give himself some space, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted up at the stranger.

"I'm here!"

A moment's pause, a deep agonizing silence... and then the voice again, closer sounding confused. "Where are you? Geralt?"

"Down!" 

_At the base of the cliff,_ he tried to add, but his tired voice broke on a rasp before he could and Geralt had to turn it into a cough. The moment he could breathe again, he cupped his hands to his mouth once more—but there was no need. A dark head of hair popped out from overtop the cliff, attached to a face that might not have been _familiar_ , exactly, but at the very least wasn't a stranger. A plain man, with a widow's peak and a stress-lined face. 

The farmer who'd hired Geralt. Iwona's father. Geralt found himself struggling to remember the man's name. Casimir? Sławomir? No, Racimir, it had to be—he remembered the panicked way the man had introduced himself, nearly in tears at the disappearance of his child.

"Oh, thank the gods," the man said, relief clear on his face even from so far up. "I thought—

Geralt almost smiled. "You thought I was dead?" 

Not that he could blame the man. He'd thought he was dead too.

"Ah, well"—Racimir shifted sheepishly—"it's not that I lack faith in your skills, sir witcher, it's just, with how fierce Iwona said the monster was..."

"She's alive, then?" Geralt asked, more sharply than he'd intended. He hadn't realized until the words left his mouth just how badly he needed the answer. She'd disappeared over the cliff's edge without him seeing, and even without a fiend lurking in it a dark stretch of forest could be a dangerous thing. If something had happened...

"Yes," Racimir told him, "she's fine, thanks to what you did. Shaken, but very much alive. My wife's got her now—I don't know that she'll ever stop holding onto her. Or lecturing her." The fondness and love in his voice was palpable.

Geralt let the words sink in. "Good. I'm... that's good."

Alive. _Alive._ He clutched onto the word and held it tightly.

"I can't tell you how glad I am to see you're alive as well, sir witcher."

"Geralt," Geralt said, "not _sir witcher_. And don't celebrate too much just yet. We fought, but it got away. I'm going to have to track it down again. I'm injured, too—can't really walk right now. Don't think I'm going to be able to get back up this cliff on my own."

"Yes," said Racimir, "yes, of course, sir—er, Geralt. Let me—"

He disappeared from the cliff's edge, only for a bundle of what looked like tangled rope to fly over the ledge, landing in a loose sort of puddle near Geralt's feet. It wasn't just rope, he noticed—it was tied together in a sort of harness-like shape, given the kind of careful attention to detail that Geralt hadn't been able to afford in his earlier, desperate attempt at a ladder. A few moments later, Racimir grabbed hold of the rope at the top and began to shimmy down it, towards Geralt.

The moment Racimir's feet touched ground he was talking again. "It's not much, I know, but if your spine or your neck aren't broken, it should be safe enough to get you up this way. Or if you can't make use of your hands right now, we can try to bring you the long way around—"

"No," Geralt interrupted, desperate to get a word in, "It's nothing so dire. I'll be able to climb like that."

It would hurt, but so would any other option they tried. And being rescued was enough of a gift. He could endure any pain if it meant getting out of here.

Racimir set to work immediately, untying straps from each other and retying them to different parts of the harness, looping them into a sturdier shape with a practiced ease.

"I'm surprised you came out here," Geralt said as Racimir worked. "You just that eager to see a fiend in the wild?"

"Of course I came. Iwona said you'd jumped off the cliff, that you'd left your _sword_ behind—I thought she must've been exaggerating, at first, but that's your weapon up at the top, isn't it?" Racimir shook his head, admiringly. "And then after that, when you were gone for hours, I figured... well, you know. I was sure I'd be coming out here to collect a body or the scraps of one, but there you were. I don't know what exactly you did to survive all that. Whatever it was, I'm damn well impressed."

Geralt was sure his cheeks hadn't gone red—but gods, they felt like they were burning. If this man knew what Geralt had done to survive that, if he ever caught even a hint... he wouldn't be so quick to heap praise, that much Geralt was sure of. The bruises left by the fiend's body seemed even more obvious now, like brands on his skin. Marking him. Shaming him.

Turning his head away, he said, "Don't be. It escaped. Not exactly a successful hunt."

The sudden steel in Racimir's voice caught Geralt by surprise—he looked up just in time to see Racimir glaring down at him, indignant, as he said, "My daughter is _alive_ because of you. I may not be a witcher like you are, but I understand what she told me well enough. If you'd arrived a moment later, or if you'd decided it wasn't worth the risk at all..." Racimir grimaced. "No. I won't think about that. All I'll say is, my child's life is much more valuable than coin or a dead beast. And you gave that to me today."

"...Well," Geralt said, taken aback. He wasn't used to failed hunts going like this. Normally his clients were much angrier when he didn't come back with a monster's head on a pike. "If you want to thank me, I wouldn't say no to a meal. And a bath."

He'd said it partly to head off any more exuberant displays of gratitude—from the way Racimir was talking, he was half-afraid the man might start trying to offer him something by the Law of Surprise—but the moment the words left his mouth he realized how desperate he truly was for both. His hunger was returning with a vengeance now. And, even more than that, he badly wanted to feel _clean_. He could feel the fiend's seed inside him still, a humiliating secret. If he could just get it all out of him, then maybe he could feel settled again.

"You'll have both," said Racimir as he finished wrapping the harness around Geralt, "and a bed besides. It's not much, I mean, just a mattress with some straw, but..."

"It sounds perfect," Geralt told him firmly. He'd slept on much, _much_ worse before.

Racimir went back up the cliff face first, using the rope and the rocks both to guide him up with the same goat-like confidence that his daughter possessed. It had to be a necessary skill with how close they lived to this massive stretch of cliff. With the harness around him providing security, Geralt found it easier to follow him up: he could grab ahold of a stead outcropping in the rock and then let Racimir tighten the slack on the line above him, keeping him from ever falling too far. It hurt, still, once or twice so badly that Geralt lost his grip on the cliff and had to let the rope steady him, but he welcomed the pain. It was a simple, uncomplicated agony, untempered by pleasure or anything else; it reminded him of overextending his body during training, or being too slow to dodge away from one of his brothers' blows during a spar. If he made himself forget about the marks across his skin or what was still left inside him, he could almost pretend it was that. But...

No. Geralt shook his head and refocused his efforts on the climb. He'd eat, and bathe, and rest, and when he was back to himself again he'd track the fiend down and kill it. He'd free himself from these strange, uneasy thoughts once and for all, and let all this be just one more embarrassing memory. The kind of hunt story he _didn't_ share with Lambert or Eskel or anyone else.

And if his body felt otherwise, if it seemed he would be marked forever, if the thought of raising his blade against the fiend made something twist within him—that would fade too, in time.

Geralt focused on the cliff in front of him, handhold over handhold, and tried to make himself believe that.

**Author's Note:**

> A few esoteric content notes that didn't fit easily into the tags: mentions of livestock death, brief thoughts of suicide, a child in peril (who is successfully rescued and comes to no harm).


End file.
